Sunday, March 14, 2010

Geneva and Holder

ZAHN: The president will be meeting with his National Security team this morning to talk about, well, the apparent discord here. Give us a preview of what this discussion might entail. When you have Secretary of State Powell saying, "Let's abide by the Geneva Convention," and then folks on the other side, we are told, saying "Wait a minute. If we hold them to that kind of status, then all they'll be required to give us is their name, rank and file number."

HOLDER: Yes, it seems to me this is an argument that is really consequential. One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention that you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.

It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohammed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not.

And yet, I understand what Secretary Powell is concerned about, and that is we're going to be fighting this war with people who are special forces, not people who are generally in uniform. And if unfortunately they somehow become detained, we would want them to be treated in an appropriate way consistent with the Geneva Convention.

Emphasis added. BTW, this interview has been discussed several places on the web (video here), although not so much in the mainstream domain in the age of Obama. There was this, regards the former counsel for Johnny Taliban (discussed in the Holder interview):

The most prominent is perhaps Assistant Attorney General Tony West, who previously represented "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh.

Nobody should be saying a lawyer who does pro-bono (or paid) work for accused terrorists is unpatriotic or unfit to serve but on the flip side, sometimes people donate to causes near to their hearts. Was Lynne Stewart patriotic? How many lawyers would jump to defend accused Neo-Nazis? Was John Adams doing the same when he defended Red Coats accused in the Boston massacre, even though we were still a British colony at the time and the Red Coats were no comparison to fanatical Islamist terrorists?

The issue cuts to the very heart of our democracy--stand firm by a constitution in the age of WMDs and suicide fanatics, or hand the commander-in-chief too much power in an effort to save the lives of citizens? It's not an easy call. Holder's flip-floppy answers belie that nature--if it were simple someone would have done it long ago. It's certainly simple to demagogue, 8 1/2 years after 9/11. Hmm, 8 1/2 years--that rings a bell.

2 comments:

John Adams did not spend all his time and spare hours defending the same type people. This is the argument.

Paul Gigot on the Journal Report on Fox, had a female guest (I did not get her name), who explained it clearly.

An attorney has only so many pro bono hours,and so many billed hours, and if he spends them all defending one group, be it pedophiles, or terrorists, or mobsters, or death row inmates, -- it is only logical to presume that he has sympathies toward that particular group.

Having attorneys with terrorist sympathies in our DOJ would be wrong. Their sympathies don't make them terrorists any more than a mob lawyer makes him a mobster.

I still wonder how many lawyers would rush to defend a group of accused nazi sympathizers, and if they did, what would people say if a Republican brought them into the Justice Dept to handle domestic terror cases.

But the main point of this post was to show that Holder isn't the super patriot the left is trying to make him--just like everyone else he thought these terrorist bastards should not get Geneva rights. That is, until it was shown to damage the GOP.